hajimete.
April 28, 2011 | 7:37 PM
Long day. And it hasn't ended, at the Seattle Central Library now for a talk about Deaf Nikkei immigrants in US internment camps and the discrimination they faced because they couldn't communicate with the US military internment camp staff. I feel a bit out of place at the moment though, everyone's signing around and behind and past me and I feel like I'm blocking everyone. It seems rude to stare at all the conversations going on around me, but I cannot help it. It's an inspiring moment, this, my first experience in the Deaf community. I need to remember this moment. It's chaotic with signing, everyone's talking to everyone else, but all I'm hearing are deaf sounds, and sporadic bursts of laughter. Somehow I'm strangely excited. Shall update this post with my thoughts on the talk soon.
*EDIT it took me some time to compose my thoughts after walking out of the library. I was affected, I think, but I didn't know exactly by what. I suddenly felt the need to hold on tight to what I had or who I treasured in my life. I think what affected me most was a former UW professor who had spent his entire life studying Japanese-Americans in Seattle, who stood up after the presentation to say that in his 50 years of research, it has never occurred to him that there would be deaf Japanese-Americans in the concentration camps. He got up to salute the presenter, deaf historian Newby Ely, and admitted to the whole crowd that he, a 70+ year old scholar, had missed out on something as important as this. That affected me. The fact that I felt out of place affected me too, and the fact that I couldn't understand what was being said around me. I think I walked out of the library a little different than when I went in.
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Just saw a little boy with a cochlear implant two rows in front of me. 初めて見たことで、なんか不思議。
こういう時はあなたといたい；ネットで話すことだけではないね、やっぱり。
velda.
